Kiss me (twist me) but remember to make it hurt
by The Readers Muse
Summary: There is something about the bizarre that clumps people together. Draws 'em. Don't matter if it's a car crash or some poor bastard getting CPR on the sidewalk, you can always guarantee there will be a flock of gawkers takin' the whole thing in.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

 **Authors Note #1:** AU that fits in sometime during Season 5 where Beth and Noah both escaped Grady in "Slabtown" and Gareth wasn't part of the Church showdown where Rick and the others laid waste to the rest of Terminus. This vaguely fits in sometime in between "Slabtown" and "Consumed." Due to some vague allusions on the part of Gareth this could be considered as a very loose companion to my Gareth oneshot: _"Breadcrumbs_ _(concerning psychological bureaucracy)_ _"_ but by no means do you have to read it to understand this fic.

 **Warnings:** Beth/Gareth, featuring evil!Beth. Adult language, mild sexual content, mature content, mild torture, blood, guts, gore, violence, masturbation, torture voyeurism, allusions to cannibalism and other related insanity. Told in Daryl's point of view.

 **Kiss me (twist me) but remember to make it hurt**

 _ **Chapter One**_

There is something about the bizarre that clumps people together. Draws 'em. Don't matter if it's a car crash or some poor bastard getting CPR on the sidewalk, you can always guarantee there will be a flock of gawkers takin' the whole thing in. Probably with fucking cameras, too. It had been like that when the house had gone up, taking his Mama along with it, lighting up what felt like half a county of people as they milled and whispered. Their weighing stares and welling tears hadn't done much for him at the time, he'd been too numb to process 'em. But later, when the singe of fire gradually faded, taking his Mama's scent out of the clothes he'd carefully squirreled away just to be close to a part of her, they only made him sick.

Which made right now pretty fucking ironic considering _he_ was the one doing the staring. Watching through the trees in the sable-dark, still not quite sure how to figure through the odds of practically stumbling right on top of them. Trying to find some semblance of the girl he'd been kicking himself over losing for near two _fucking_ weeks in the face of the predator that stood – sleek and highlighted by a roaring fire in the center of the clearing.

And while the details of the thing weren't important, he figured that the feeling, sunk deep in his gut like a bleeding sore, was as close as he could get to describing how he felt as he watched the heel of Beth's boot come down hard. Snapping with a brutal crack across over the black kid's busted leg. Her expression transported, like pleasure and joy all wrapped up into one as the twisted fuck beside the fire laughed.

"You know, when my Daddy was younger he used to raise cattle," Beth began softly, speaking clear over the kid's cut off howl of pain. Watching with morbid interest as her prey squirmed furiously, dark eyes rolling. Showing blood-shot whites as Beth turned, sending Gareth a slither of a smile before turning her attention back to the lump, breathing – winded – on the ground at her feet.

"He had a small herd, but it was prize winning. People were always callin', needing our Steers. He got into Dairy eventually, more for the challenge than anything. We didn't need the money. But Daddy liked the smell of living things," she continued, voice syrupy sweet and unforgiving as she balanced the end of _his fucking buck knife_ carelessly in her palm. Crouching down in front of the kid they had trussed up by the tree like a hog for slaughter.

"But sometimes a calf was born wrong. Sometimes one of the older ones trampled it by accident. Sometimes there wasn't anything you could do but put it out of its misery," she added, tone like velvet. Lending credence to a sleeping malice he could practically _feel_ -dripping cold down his spine.

"He always sent me back to the house when Otis did it. But I could still hear the screams. You know how similar the sound is to a person screaming? Sometimes you could close your eyes and just imagine it…" she murmured, self-indulgent eyes fluttered closed, head tilted so that her hair, loose and wild with humid-curls sheathed in front of her face.

Gareth shifted from his seat by the fire. Chuckling darkly before leaning forward, elbows to knees as the firelight danced shadows across his face. "Butcher or cattle. It's nature, Noah. Human nature. Animal nature. The weak die. The weak _always_ die. That part hasn't changed."

Noah just glared, silent and sweating around the gag stuck firm between his teeth.

"You almost got us killed you know," Beth remarked, blue eyes slitting despite the china-doll smile that remained fixed on her face. "Back at Grady. Out on the road. _Pathetic_. But I made you believe it though, didn't I? That we were in this together. That I was _really_ going with you to Virginia. Don't worry, if it makes you feel any better I have had lots of practice. Pretending. Lying. Hell, even my own Daddy never knew."

The callouses on his index finger flirted with the trigger of his crossbow as Beth pointed the knife right between the kid's eyes, ghosting the sharp of it – feather-light and barely there – from nose to chin. Flirting with the cracked plush of his lower lip as Noah let go of a baseless sound. Something that might have been a whimper if he hadn't been so caught up in keeping still.

"Then you tried to run when Gareth told us about his community. About what happened there. Why he is out here now, alone. That's rude you know," Beth told him, running the knife down the vulnerable slope of his neck and down across his chest. Sending the top button pinging off into empty space. "After he fed us, protected us when your gun jammed. I expected better from you, Noah. Really, I did."

He got hung up on it. Losing track of himself in favor of just watching. Forgetting where he was and how fucking close he was from probably a full out brawl as he tried to make sense of what his brain was telling him. But the instinctive denial had been all too fleeting. Shifting right into damage control and an odd, rolling sort of betrayal that immediately had his hackles up.

"Do you have any idea what it's like? Hiding? Lying? Surrounded by people but always feeling alone? Forced to wear this mask, day in and day out just so your family can keep thinking they know you? No. You don't, do you? You can't see it. _You don't know_ ," she breathed, shaking her head, pushing a fraction of a millimeter deeper with the knife so that a fine line of crimson started soaking through the white of the kid's shirt.

 _How the hell had he missed this shit? For fucks sakes, how had any of 'em? Maggie and Hershel? Glenn? Rick? Carol? Christ. It didn't make any sense. Beth was- well, Beth! She was sweet and young and stupidly trusting. She sang all the damned time and had practically been attached to Judith's fucking hip ever since Lori-_

"You don't know and you never will. People like you think we're wrong. Broken. They made us feel ashamed of what we are, made us feel like we were lesser. That we needed pills, therapy, blood tests and psychiatrists. But you're wrong," she firmed, eyes shining. Glittering like the manic part of a fever as she caught Gareth's gaze and held it.

" _They were wrong._ We're strong. _We're_ the ones that make it now."

The gag creaked. Straining as Noah muffled something. An insult, a curse, maybe even a plea into the filthy cloth. It was worse when his eyes shifted, realizing that the fucker by the fire was staring back at her with something close to _worship_.

He bit down on the inside of his cheek until his mouth was flooded with his own red. Swallowing thickly as the inside of his lower lip started drowning in it. Realizing quite suddenly that he had no idea what to do. _What could he do? What would Maggie do? Rick? Or, more to the point, what could he live with come sunrise?_

"I don't have to pretend anymore. I am free. _We're free_ ," She hummed, shaking back a thatch of long, corn-silk hair as the knife dipped lower, pausing in the v of the kid's groin like she were making some sort of fucked up promise. "Out here, on our own? That's all we've ever wanted. The right to just… _be_."

 _How the fuck was he going to tell Maggie? Hell, any of 'em. They were never going to believe it. Shit, he barely could! He could already picture it, the excuses they'd make, trying to make sense of it the same as he was. Maybe she was just pretending? Maybe she didn't mean it? Maybe it was a play that the kid was in on? Maybe this was the only way she figured they could get little Terminus' guard down? But he knew. It was that shiver of truth that went bone deep, like when you saw someone's true face for the first time. She was an actor inside her own skin and she'd fooled them all._

"But you?" Beth remarked, pressing the toe of her boot into the soft of the man's wounded leg. Drawing out the question as the kid groaned, her sickly smile not even so much as wavering an inch. Only widening, luxurious and rich as Gareth palmed himself through the stiff of his dirty jeans. "You're just…meat. Slow. Lumbering. Broken down…meat."

"Dawn was right you know, you'll never make it out here. You aren't meant for it. And _shhhh_ , that's okay," she soothed, acting like Noah's struggles to lean away from her were something else entirely. Oozing violence like the whip-crack of an exploding shell.

"Don't worry, we both know how to make it quick…clean…if you're good. You are going to be good, Noah? Aren't you? For me?"

* * *

 **A/N #2:** Thank you for reading. Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – There will be one more chapter, stay tuned.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

 **Authors Note #1:** AU that fits in sometime during Season 5 where Beth and Noah both escaped Grady in "Slabtown" and Gareth wasn't part of the Church showdown where Rick and the others laid waste to the rest of Terminus. This vaguely fits in sometime in between "Slabtown" and "Consumed." – Due to some vague allusions on the part of Gareth this could be considered as a very loose companion to my Gareth oneshot: _"Breadcrumbs_ _(concerning psychological bureaucracy)_ _"_ but by no means do you have to read it to understand this fic.

 **Warnings:** Beth/Gareth, featuring evil!Beth. Adult language, mild sexual content, mature content, mild torture, blood, guts, gore, violence, masturbation, torture voyeurism, allusions to cannibalism and other related insanity. Told in Daryl's point of view.

 **Kiss me (twist me) but remember to make it hurt**

 _ **Chapter Two**_

The look Noah fixed her with could have cooled molten iron. But it was his eyes that gave him away. _That reminded the world he was a victim_. An innocent trying to understand this brutal double-cross. Only Beth barely even noticed, attention already caught as Gareth straightened. Sharpening his knife with slow, hair-raising sweeps across his grind-stone.

"I used to think, before all this - before everything ended - that there was no one else out there like me," the man started, expression latent and self-depreciating as he watched the girl through the thick of his lashes. Pale skin seeming to swallow the light rather than reflect it.

"I was different. Like my mom. She used to paint, she was good at it too, did these big murals that people always wanted to buy. Only she liked to smear red over them afterwards. Told me she was just telling the truth and using art to do it. Show how even a beautiful thing can be ugly. How appearances can be deceiving. The truth depended on the week and how much our dad had been drinking," he remarked with a shrug, testing the edge of his knife with his thumb before giving it another half a dozen strokes.

"I didn't paint, but I thought different, curious about things people told me I shouldn't be. It was harmless at first, things people could chalk up as 'kid stuff' and neatly put away. But when I grew up they started to notice. Like prey scenting a predator, I could fit in when I was camouflaged but I could never get close to anyone," Gareth remarked, chuckling without warmth as he shook his head. Chin tipping up to reveal the vulnerable line of a stubble-strewn throat. Practically putting a target on himself as his fingers itched across the trigger of his crossbow. Eyes flicking from where Beth's knife was resting – just above the kid's carotid – weighing the odds.

 _What if he moved? What if she flinched? What if he missed?_

"I was that little voice that whispered about strangers in trench coats and dark alleys while another part told them they were wrong for even thinking it. Guilty for making assumptions they couldn't prove. It was fascinating you know? Watching the different parts of human behavior clash. How willing some people were to turn a blind eye on what their instincts were telling them," the man shared, leaning forward, quietly manic. "Good for one night stands and weekend hook-ups but none of them ever lasted. There was always something, a reason for why they drifted away. But I knew."

"It was their hind brains," he explained, tapping at his temple, nail chewed up and ragged. "That thing the back of their minds that was telling them that I wasn't safe…that I wasn't quite right. And they listened."

"After my thesis nearly got me kicked out of university I thought I'd never find someone. Someone like me - someone who understood. I was beginning to think I'd have to do what my mom did. Get someone knocked up and create my own family," Gareth continued, hand sweeping out, like he was highlighting a future that could have been.

"But then you come along, sweet as anything. I watched you guys for days you know. Shadowing you. I saw you. _The real you._ Every time you turned around, eying the treeline. Every time you had to stop and let the gimp rest. Every time he tried to talk about what the world used to be - what people like him had lost - I saw it in your eyes. _I knew._ You were like me."

The smile Beth gave him was slow – like spiced molasses rolling from the rim of a jar – thick and sweet with the aftertaste of heartburn waiting at the wings as her head lolled to the side. Not even so much as looking down when she allowed the point of the knife to sink a couple inches deep into the soft flesh of the kid's thigh. Ignoring his muffled scream as the knife came back red and dripping.

Her hip cocked as the two of them met eyes across the fire. Like two sides of the same fucked up coin. The irony was almost poetry, curling and bitter-beautiful on his tongue.

"You and me, people like us? We're free now," she murmered, picking her way around the fire. Mindless of the spitting sparks as a sudden wind kicked up from the east.

"We used to have to hide," she purred, settling herself into the shallow of Gareth's lap – all lithe little hips and a predatory boldness he'd never thought could look so wrong on _anyone_. His free hand curled into a fist as Gareth's thumbs brushed across the dips, flirting with the loops of her belt as she moved on top of him – hips rolling slow.

"We were told that we were wrong, twisted and rotten on the inside. That we needed help. Help to live. Help to fit in. Help to see the world like they did. To be soft. _Weak_. But now things are different. Now they are the ones that don't fit in…that aren't quite right. We're made for this. We own it. _We can own it._ "

"Yes," Gareth breathed gripping her chin painfully before bringing her down for a vicious kiss. Violently joyful between flashes of teeth – sharp and glinting in the ember-light. Something that was only made ten times worse when Beth wrapped her arms around his neck, capturing him close. Demanding the prick's attention as Terminus' hand snaked between them, pawing at the shadows wreathed around the clutch of her jeans as he tasted the sour of his own breath.

 _Christ, he was gonna be sick._

"You're perfect you know," Terminus continued, completely ignoring the way the kid – Noah - was inching backwards. Using their distraction to start making for the trees nearest him, injured leg dragging. "Perfect for me. Perfect for this world. Perfect for, _ah fuck_ -"

He was so deep in it, hating himself – _her_. Hating the stupidly unforgiving situation she'd put him in that he nearly missed the glint of the knife as she held it aloft. Breaking away from Gareth's lips to lean back, grinding down until he hissed out a groan before running her fingers down the bloodied edge.

"Most predators don't hunt in packs. They work alone. But wolves?" She lilted, letting the half-question air out, teasing through the smoke and sparks as she rolled the blood between her thumb and forefinger. "They work together. They are the most like us, you know. They run together. They're a family, lovers – _pack_. They care. Share their kills. They protect each other."

Gareth nipped at her chin, like an interloper asking for acceptance. _Love._ Despite the firm grip he still had on her hips. Keeping her tight – close – like he half expected her to dissolve into nothing. Rejoining the midnight-mist as another distant howl joined the first.

"Will you stay? Will you run with me?" She thrummed, arcing back in his grip as clothed hips began rolling in time. Caught up in the heat of it as Gareth buried his face into her neck, teeth flashing even as his entire frame seemed to shudder – hunching with gratitude.

"I will," he returned, the words fierce and iron-hard as he panted – breathless. "I'll hunt with you."

The words devolved as they met open air. Tumbling out like a growl as somewhere in the deep woods a stick cracked. He stiffened, turning slowly despite the fact that the couple hadn't so much as flinched. He squinted. But couldn't see anything. Keeping one eye on the clearing as Beth's grin turned feral and liquid, basking in the moment before she traced her bloody finger across Terminus' forehead.

It was only when she leaned back and offered the knife for him to do the same that he realized what it was. A sloppy, blood-thick 'w'. And while he had no idea how the little shit knew, he did the same to her. Thick fingers painting the wide-flared letter across the center of her forehead.

 _What the hell?_

He was about to turn away, chalk it up to a deer or some shit, but then-

 _Snap!_

 _Crack!_

 _Shit!_ _  
_ _  
_The growls sounded like they were coming from all sides, like there had been a herd not too far away that had caught the echoes of their words and followed them back to the source. He aimed his crossbow into the black, keeping hidden as Beth and Gareth separated, weapons in hand and heads on swivel.

"Walkers!" Gareth whispered, hissing as he turned a tight circle, listening. "Probably two different herds. We go now and we can cut clean to the south, avoid both of them."

Beth just nodded, kicking at the coals. Making sure the embers were small enough not to pose the risk of a grassfire when the herd came rambling through.

"We do have one loose end though," Gareth drawled, head cocked. Fingers flirting with the trigger as he unholstered his gun and nudged at the kid's temple with it. Nose wrinkling when the barrel came back slick with blood and sweat.

"Leave him!" Beth chirped, sheathing her knife. Lyrical and almost sing-song as she danced around the fire. Whirling in place as the sparks kicked up, making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as she twirled amongst them. Unafraid and damn near _elemental_ as the long, mournful howl of a wolf sang out in the midnight-dark. Joining the chorus as she tossed back her head and joined in.

 _Wolf mother._

 _Alpha._

 _The message was unmistakable._

"Let dead meat rot. He isn't going anywhere. He'll slow them down. They like their prey alive and since we're in a position to provide, I don't see the sense in being bad hosts, do you?"

He was able to see every detail of their expressions as the moon broke free from the clouds and bathed the clearing in off-colored light. But what he saw only made his lip-curl. Eyes stinging like mourning as the girl who'd once sang to Judith, who'd cared enough to ask after him when he was trying his best to pull away, flaked off into ashes the longer he watched.

"You really are my kind of bitch," Gareth cracked, smile like a lit forest-fire as he grabbed her around the waist and yanked her in for a brutal kiss. Both of them looking like something out of another time with their painted faces and wild hair as the sound of the herd grew in volume, closing in from all sides before the moment finally snapped and suddenly they were moving again. Grabbing their weapons and packs but keeping their plans silent as Noah writhed in the glow of the flames – trying to loosen the ropes.

 _Kid was a fighter, make no mistake._

"Goodbye Noah," Beth called, hand in hand with Gareth as she paused at the edge of the clearing like an afterthought. Raising her voice with deliberate cruelty as a chorus of excited growls filtered through the air. "If you see my Daddy, tell him I love him…but that I probably won't be seein' him. Try and make him understand, won't you?"

He waited until the forest swallowed her. Until the echoes of their laughter faded, anointing the air with the promise of blood and darker things before he pushed through the brush and into the clearing.

He didn't say anything, just a finger to his lips as the kid startled, saving them both when the gag stopped the base tones of the instinctive yell that rose up like a reflex. Instead he crossed quick, holding the kid's stare – soothing but firm – before unsheathing his knife and cutting the knot in the gag.

"Do you know her?" Noah gasped, voice whisper-soft, like he just had to know. Clutching at him instinctively as he hacked through the ropes with violent jerks of his knife. Tasting the acid-flashback of his dinner – surging like the threat of vomit – as he yanked kid to his feet.

"No," he grunted, hair shading in front of his eyes as he tried to put it away, compartmentalizing it to try and make sense of later – before he jerked his thumb, gesturing for the kid to follow as he set off towards the tree-line. Away from the encroaching sounds of the herd already crashing close, drawn by the fire and the noise. Opposite the path Beth and Terminus had taken. Trying and failing to figure what the hell they were going to do now as Noah limped after him, determined.

"Guess I didn't, after all."

* * *

 **A/N #2:** Thank you for reading. Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – This story is now complete.


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